Educational Science

Teensy Newfound Frog Is Smallest Known Vertebrate

The tropical forest in Papua New Guinea is a noisy place at night, filled with the calls from all sorts of living things: frogs, birds and insects, including especially loud cicadas. One particular call — a high-pitched, cricketlike tink-tink-tink — caught the attention of herpetologist Christopher Austin and his graduate...

Chorus Frog Blamed for Spreading Devastating Disease

A common West Coast frog, the Pacific chorus frog, may be spreading the deadly fungal infection that is devastating other amphibians, a new study suggests. Not only did the tiny chorus frogs survive an epidemic of the disease, called chytridiomycosis, that devastated their neighbors—once-abundant mountain yellow-legged frogs —in Sixty Lake...

Each year, thousands of live salamanders arrive in shipments on U.S. shores, a trade that must stop immediately, scientists say. According to new research, a ban on salamander imports is crucial to stopping the spread of a deadly fungus that kills almost every salamander it infects. Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, also known...

Frog Fungus Causes Grisly Death by Dehydration

A fungus that has torn through frog populations worldwide kills by dehydrating the hapless amphibians, disrupting electrolyte balance and causing cardiac arrest. The fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which is responsible for chytridiomycosis disease, has caused massive frog death on a global scale, threatening many species with extinction. When the fungus reached...

Facts About Salamanders

Salamanders are amphibians that look like a cross between a frog and a lizard. Their bodies are long and slender; their skin is moist and usually smooth; and they have long tails. Salamanders are very diverse; some have four legs; some have two. Also, some have lungs, some have gills,...

Yellow, Blob-Like Cell Transforms into Wriggling Salamander in Surreal Time-Lapse Video

A mesmerizing 6-minute time lapse shows a single cell dividing seemingly endlessly until what was once a yellow blob has become a wriggling, darting salamander tadpole. I wanted to film the origin of life, said Jan van IJken, a a photographer and filmmaker based in the Netherlands who created the...

Facts About Newts

Newts are small semi-aquatic amphibians that look like a cross between a frog and a lizard. Newts possess several interesting characteristics. For example, though they may look cute and harmless, they can be dangerous; toxins secreted through the skin as a defense mechanism could kill a person. Newts also can...

This Salamander Breathes Through 'Christmas Trees' Growing from Its Head

A sinuous swamp salamander with spots like a leopard and Christmas-tree-shaped fronds growing from its head hid from scientists for decades. But researchers have finally described this elusive and two-legged aquatic oddity. Dubbed Siren reticulata — reticulated siren — the animal bears a closer resemblance to an eel than a...

In Photos: Lost Salamanders Discovered

Long-Lost Salamander (Image credit: Carlos Vasquez Almazan)It's been 42 years since it was last sighted, but the Jackson's Climbing Salamander (Bolitoglossa jacksoni) is alive and well. This brilliant yellow salamander was discovered in Guatemala in 1975 and hadn't been seen since. But in October 2017, Ramos León, a guard at...

Axolotls: The adorable, giant salamanders of Mexico

When the Aztecs settled the Valley of Mexico around what is now Mexico City in the 13th century, they found a large salamander living in the lake surrounding the island where they built their capital, Tenochtitlán. They called the salamander axolotl after Xolotl, their god of fire and lightning. Xolotl...